Almost everyone has gone to school, and many have been enrolled at more than one school, but finding the enrolment records can be a very time consuming task. Thanks to the Queensland Family History Society, they have made the daunting task of looking for school records (in Queensland) incredibly simple.

The 'Queensland School Pupils Index' series endeavours to make the task of searching for Queensland pupils easier by bringing together in one index names from many sources. Dates range from 1872 to 1966 (a 30 year closure on names exists). Schools range in size from large city, with admissions in the thousands to country one-teacher schools with an enrolment of just hundreds. Some schools have long ceased to exist - others are still functioning.

Sources from which the names are drawn are as diverse as the actual schools - admission registers, school histories covering a significant anniversary, local histories that do not specifically focus on the school but include a pupils' list as part of their story. Many sources provide additional family information including age at admission, parents’ names, occupation, religion and address - all very useful to the family historian and genealogist.

Listing records from over 250 schools, the index can be directly searched on name, school and year with QFHSdatasearch version 1.6 which is a generic interface designed to search genealogy databases and developed by the Queensland Family History Society Inc. This version features field oriented and keyword searches, Boolean selection, sorting, and wildcard searches. A full list of schools listed can be downloaded here (note: this requires Adobe (Acrobat) Reader to view).